Work for local author starts with child's play
If the characters in the new novel "Little Children" seem familiar, it's no accident. Author Tom Perrotta is a Belmont resident, and he freely admits to finding inspiration among the local swing sets.
Since its release last month, Perrotta's fifth book is a top seller on the New York Times and
The story follows an illicit summer love affair between Sarah and Todd, two stay-at-home parents whose young children conveniently nap at the same time each afternoon. The pair seek comfort from their sputtering marriages and stalled careers among playgrounds and a town pool that's a dead ringer for the Underwood pool in Belmont.
Perrotta's own experience on local playgrounds helped him flesh out these characters.
"When I first started going to the playground, I thought I would meet a lot of other stay-at-home dads. And I didn't," he said. "In the daytime, it was a world of women. And I noticed sometimes that it would make the women uncomfortable to have a man there, and they would be unfriendly.
"But then, other times, there would be a mom who didn't fit in with the other moms, and I would be more likely to have a conversation with them. And it was sort of the Sarah-and-Todd dynamic."
Sarah's and Todd's lives are governed by the care of preschoolers. Their only excitement is trysting behind the backs of Todd's ambitious but unfulfilled filmmaker wife, Kathy, and Sarah's husband, Richard, who spends nights trolling the website of his imaginary mistress, "Slutty Kay."
"I guess I'm writing from a generation that really believed that we do have a right to pursue our own happiness, and sometimes that happiness is in conflict with some of the institutional structures of our lives," Perrotta said. "By doing these morally questionable things, they've come closer to some sort of self-knowledge that will allow them to reconstitute their lives in some happier way. They know more what they want and who they are."
Perrotta, who calls his book "a comic novel about adultery," said the title refers to both adults and their offspring. "There are a lot of adults with unruly urges that they can't control, and in that sense, they're like children," said Perrotta. "I'm writing about those people that are dissatisfied or shocked by the change in their lifestyle that came with having kids. They suddenly feel like their decisions are not their own anymore."
"I think what these characters are rebelling against is some sense that their stories are over, that they're not supposed to want anything more."
Becoming a successful writer was Perrotta's singular ambition. "If you asked me when I was 18, I would have said I'd like my adult life to look something like it looks now, so I feel kind of lucky in that way."
Perrotta, 42, lives in a two-family house with his wife, Mary Granfield, also a writer, and their children, Nina, 10, and Luke, 7.
Perrotta grew up in Garwood, N.J., and came to Boston to teach freshman writing at Harvard in 1994. He and his wife settled in Belmont around the time his first novel, "Election," was published and then made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.
As his daughter began elementary school, Perrotta said the lure of Belmont's schools was decisive.
"The greatest thing about Belmont, for me, is it's really close to Cambridge," said Perrotta with a sheepish grin. "You've got to face it with Belmont; it's not the most exciting town."
But, he adds, "It's not that kind of remote suburb where you feel like your kids will never go anywhere unless you drive them."
Perrotta has been surprised at the reaction from critics and readers who see the book as the rebirth of the suburban novel. Perrotta thinks he has simply touched on a subject that has been resonating in popular culture with the film "American Beauty" and the MTV reality show "The Osbournes."
Take Ozzy Osbourne, said Perrotta. "Here's this guy who's somehow gotten to be a father, he's in his 50s. He seems to have managed to glide through life without ever becoming an adult, and people find that very funny, but I think they also secretly think, 'Yeah, that's the way to do it.' "
With New Line Cinema making "Little Children" into a film next year, Perrotta is now working on the screenplay with director Todd Field. It's work that's part mental diversion and part financial necessity.
"Most of us live with circumstances that are not perfect, but we rationalize them and say, 'It's the best I can do right now.' We put up with lots of imperfections all the time, and we struggle to be happy, but maybe not as hard as we should. And we often don't come to these really clear epiphanies," said Perrotta.
"Obviously, there are some people who are very clear about what they want and know how to get it . . . but who wants to write about that?"
